Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: policy

First wave 🌊.

Your questions answered — an update (11−03−2020): Professor Neil Ferguson on the current status of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, case numbers, intervention measures and challenges countries are currently facing.

Read all reports including estimates of epidemic size, transmissibility, severity, phylogenetics, undetected cases, prevalence and symptom progression here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-gida

The Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) brings together global health researchers in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Drawing on Imperial’s expertise in data analytics, epidemiology and economics, J-IDEA improves our understanding of diseases and health emergencies in the most vulnerable populations across the globe. The Institute links governments, research institutions and communities to develop practical and effective long-term solutions, shape health policy and deliver better quality of life for all.

Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA)
Website: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/JIDEA
Twitter: @Imperial_JIDEA, https://twitter.com/Imperial_JIDEA

MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (MRC GIDA)
Website: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-gida
Twitter: @MRC_Outbreak, https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak

Interviewee: Professor Neil Ferguson, Imperial College London, Director of J-IDEA and MRC GIDA
Interviewer and Producer: Dr Sabine van Elsland, Imperial College London, J-IDEA, MRC GIDA
Producer: Dr Katharina Hauck, Imperial College London, Deputy Director of J-IDEA, MRC GIDA
Associate Producer: Oliver Geffen Obregon, School of Public Health, Imperial College London.
Director and A Cam Operator: Tiago Melo, Digital Learning Hub
B Cam Operator: Jack Lowe, Digital Learning Hub
C Cam Operator: Erdvilas Abukevicius, Digital Learning Hub
Editor: Anne Marie RĂŒtzou Bruntse, Digital Learning Hub
Assistant editor: Tiziana Mangiaratti, Digital Learning Hub.

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NASA’s Ames Research Center in California has issued a mandatory policy for employees to work from home after one worker tested positive for the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

The research center, which is located in Moffett Field in the Silicon Valley, has been placed on restricted access after the employee was confirmed to have the coronavirus on Sunday (March 8).

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Putting AI to its broadest use in national defense will mean hardening it against attack.

America’s intelligence collectors are already using AI in ways big and small, to scan the news for dangerous developments, send alerts to ships about rapidly changing conditions, and speed up the NSAs regulatory compliance efforts. But before the IC can use AI to its full potential, it must be hardened against attack. The humans who use it — analysts, policy-makers and leaders — must better understand how advanced AI systems reach their conclusions.

Dean Souleles is working to put AI into practice at different points across the U.S. intelligence community, in line with the ODNIs year-old strategy. The chief technology advisor to the principal deputy to the Director of National Intelligence wasn’t allowed to discuss everything that he’s doing, but he could talk about a few examples.

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I am not naive — I’ve worked as an aerospace engineer for 35 years — I realize that PR can differ from reality. However, this indication gives me some hope:

“The draft recommendations emphasized human control of AI systems. “Human beings should exercise appropriate levels of judgment and remain responsible for the development, deployment, use, and outcomes of DoD AI systems,” it reads.”

This is far from a Ban on Killer Robots, however, given how many advances are being overturned in the US federal government (example: the US will now use landmines, after over 30 years of not employing them in war), this is somewhat encouraging.

As always, the devil is in the details.

Sources say the list will closely follow an October report from a defense advisory board.

The Defense Department will soon adopt a detailed set of rules to govern how it develops and uses artificial intelligence, officials familiar with the matter told Defense One.

A draft of the rules was released by the Defense Innovation Board, or DIB, in October as “Recommendations on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence.” Sources indicated that the Department’s policy will follow the draft closely.

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How close are we to creating a synthetic human genome?

Creating humans is also an ethical minefield. Unsettled questions about who might own a synthetic human genome abound. Boeke warns that ownership could come down to who ends up funding the project development. Rob Carlson, a co-author of the GP-Write proposal, is even more skeptical of the idea of a patented artificial human genome, pointing out via email that “as soon as there is any possibility of a synthetic genome being used to germinate a live human, then ownership is obviously out of the question anyway
because you are now talking about owning a person.”

So far the GP-write project has been more talk than action, with large consultation meetings held between scientists and policy experts. The project has yet to attract significant funding. Perhaps successes in other organisms like yeast will embolden governments and private industry to open up to the idea of a man-made human genome.

Given that building a genome is so technically demanding, and with uncertain rewards, I’ve often wondered why anyone might want to undertake such a venture. Some, like Boeke, seem to be in it mainly for the science — for the questions that can only be answered by building life from scratch. Others, like Harvard geneticist George Church, a genome sequencing pioneer and co-author of the GP-write proposal, are more excited by the potential life-changing applications. In any case, it’s clear that writing genomes is the next major scientific frontier — and that we’re well on our way to crossing it.

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Congratulations to Osinakachi Gabriel for his launch of the first publication the TAFFD’s “Magazine of the Future” — Also thanks for the Bioquark (page 37) and Regenerage (page 72) profiles — https://issuu.com/taffds/docs/taffd_s_magazine_2019 #Futurism #Longevity #Transhumanism #Biotechnology #Health #Wellness #Regeneration #LifeExtension #Aging #Immortality #IraPastor #Bioquark #Regenerage #Ideaxme #Singularity #Consciousness #AI #JasonSilva #ArtificiaIIntelligence #SENS

In this first issue by Trandisciplinary Agora For Future Discussions, we approach reality from a transdisciplinary perspective in order to find unity and greater understanding of the world as we enter a new paradigm in technological advancements that will lead us to transcending our own biology while enhancing our mental and physical limitations. We explore all topics that relate to transhumanism, cybernetic singularity, energy, consciousness, international policy, electromagnetic forces, language, AI, digitalization, ethics, philosophy, biotechnology, futurism and more.

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PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb 5 (Reuters) — The Federal Reserve is looking at a broad range of issues around regulations and protections for digital payments and currencies, including the costs and potential benefits of issuing its own digital currency, Governor Lael Brainard said on Wednesday.

“By transforming payments, digitalization has the potential to deliver greater value and convenience at lower cost,” Brainard said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The speech did not touch on interest rates or the current economic outlook.

“But there are risks,” Brainard said, in a partial reprisal of her own and other global central bankers’ worries about the rise of private digital payment systems and currencies, including Facebook’s Libra digital currency project. “Some of the new players are outside the financial system’s regulatory guardrails, and their new currencies could pose challenges in areas such as illicit finance, privacy, financial stability, and monetary policy transmission.”

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The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.

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President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.

More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.

“Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”

by

Jake Johnson, staff writer.

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